Slow Down Rush To Cut

About the Author

Mackenzie EaglenResearch Fellow for National Security Studies, Allison Center for Foreign Policy StudiesDouglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy

Completing President Barack Obama's U.S. defense budget request
for fiscal 2010 means one thing: making difficult cuts. While
specific decisions have yet to be made, Pentagon issue teams are
using Office of Management and Budget guidelines to identify which
programs to delay, scale back or eliminate.

But they're operating in a serious information vacuum. Any major
cuts they recommend are arbitrary until the administration issues
its essential second policy instrument following a fiscal
blueprint, which is the National Security Strategy. Both, in turn,
affect the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which shapes future
planning, programming and budgeting decisions. There's one big
problem - the QDR won't be released for about a year.

The fiscal blueprint has been released and the National Security
Strategy will be out sooner, obviously, but not before Pentagon
officials are expected to come up with their recommended cuts.
That's why the administration should create a buffer between the
demands of the budget calendar and the strategy policy process.
Both the initial budget decisions and the conduct of the National
Security Strategy should precede the QDR. Only then can the
Pentagon teams recommend sensible cuts.

Too often, the requirements of the budget calendar have
marginalized the more deliberate policy-making process. Ensuring
the policy process is the driving force in defense planning means
the secretary of defense must carefully manage the calendar and
issue clear directives on how defense budgets will result from the
relevant policy-making endeavors.

Ultimately, the QDR should define the essential programmatic
building blocks of the overall defense structure and dictate that
adequate resources will be devoted to maintaining and, where
necessary, creating these building blocks.

The U.S. military should seek to maintain critical capability
sets versus contingency planning against specific and potentially
unlikely scenarios. No single review can precisely anticipate the
full array of operations that the U.S. military may be asked to
perform up to two decades in advance.

Strategy always changes faster than force structure. Not every
potential threat can be predicted, and it takes many years to
acquire the manpower and weapons for a strong military. This
requires the U.S. military to plan its forces around a grand
strategy and hedge with specific capabilities to meet any future
requirements.

These core capabilities - many of which the military possesses
today - should be the mainstays of strategic planning. They
include: protecting and defending the United States and its allies
against attack, air dominance, maritime control, space control,
counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, the ability to seize and
control territory against organized ground forces, projecting power
to distant regions, and information dominance throughout
cyberspace.

Focusing the QDR efforts will put in place the basic building
blocks the military needs to perform necessary operations as they
arise. These building blocks must be sufficiently robust and
redundant to permit an effective response to surprises.

Unfortunately, it's easy to predict where the defense budget
will ultimately be cut. The victim is always modernization.
Ironically, a reduced acquisition budget will reduce competition
and interdependence among contractors. This, in turn, forces
increased costs on the taxpayers.

The modernization account funds next-generation weapon systems,
platforms, trucks, ships, helicopters and planes. The major problem
is that our men and women in uniform really need these programs and
cannot afford a modernization depression. Weakness invites crisis.
Military leaders have repeatedly testified that repairing old
equipment and buying newer, more technologically advanced equipment
will be a top priority for years to come, even after hostilities
cease in Iraq and, eventually, Afghanistan.

The services are in a crucial phase of recapitalization and
scheduled to field new platforms that will anchor U.S. security for
the next generation. This doesn't mean defense spending should be
considered a stimulus package, because America shouldn't pay for
anything more than the military absolutely needs.

Nor is it to say the Pentagon should be considered a political
untouchable. In these challenging times, policy-makers must set
priorities, make choices and ultimately negotiate trade-offs. But a
decision to undermine military capability and readiness should not
be one of them.

Cuts - particularly those without strategic justifications and
resulting in a modest and restrained strategy - have consequences.
Slashing the defense budget without first conducting a thorough
strategic defense review, and without specifying which missions and
commitments can be safely abandoned, would be the height of
irresponsibility.

The military doesn't need a funding surge, but sustained and
predictable long-term investment to rebuild and modernize. The
decisions about what specific investments should be made or not
should also wait until the proper strategic framework is provided
after this year.

Mackenzie Eaglen is the Senior Policy Analyst
for defense and homeland security issues in the Douglas and Sarah
Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation.

About the Author

Mackenzie EaglenResearch Fellow for National Security Studies, Allison Center for Foreign Policy StudiesDouglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy